The Pictures From Afghanistan You Never See

There's a war on. You probably knew that, in the sense that you read somewhere about a major offensive in Afghanistan. But if you're like us, you haven't seen many photos. It looks like Vietnam over there.

We get up every morning and read the paper, watch cable news, scan the RSS feeds obsessively all day, watch cable news at night, and go to bed. And rarely are we confronted with photographic evidence of what's happening in Aghanistan, which has already claimed the lives of more international forces so far this July than any other month since the war began. Operation Khanjar, the coalition's attempt to sweep Al Quaeda and Taliban militants out of their stronghold in Southwestern Afghanistan, is the largest airlift offensive since the Vietnam War, involving 4,000 Marines. It is the first major step in Obama's efforts to escalate the war there, and crucial to the U.S.'s plan to restabilize the country and provide breathing room for President Hamad Karzai to operate. Just today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he was open to sending more troops to support the effort. Yet we were surprised to find a photo of an IED claiming the lives of two Marines on the front page of the New York Times Wednesday simply because a front-page battlefield photo is so rare.

But every day we are jarred when we check Cryptome, the conspiratorial anti-secrecy web site run by Manhattan architect John Young. Since the offensive began in Helmand Province late last month, Young has been posting striking images of what American servicemembers and their allies have been enduring in Afghanistan. Most of the images come from the Defense Department itself, which freely distributes battlefield photographs on its web site. It's a very strange thing that the best source for photos of the American way of war is a radical anti-authoritarian malcontent who posts Pentagon-approved imagery. These images should be on the front page of the New York Times every day, or at least every week. Here's a gallery.